Peete Content Being No. 2

He's Helping Hoying Along

August 21, 1998|By JOE LOGAN; The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — If he's miserable in his new role as a backup quarterback, Rodney Peete is as good an actor as his Hollywood wife, Holly Robinson.

During training camp scrimmages, he shows no signs of brooding. Peete, 32, looks on like the elder statesman he has become, often grinning as he watches the Eagles'latest great quarterback hope, Bobby Hoying.

When it comes his turn to take a snap, Peete steps up quickly. He fired a 25-yard pass earlier this week that he punctuated with a little midfield celebratory dance.

He wasn't hotdogging, and he didn't look around for acknowledgement or validation. Why bother? There is no fight for the starting quarterback job this year. His coach and teammates know it, the fans know it, and most important, Peete himself conceded it when he agreed to a three-year deal late last year to hang around as a backup.

``Obviously, I'd love to play -- that's why you play the game, because you want to be out on the field,'' Peete said after practice earlier this week. ``But the situation is that Bobby Hoying is the starter.''

Peete was a starter in this town, but he was never a star.

From the moment he arrived with a one-year deal in 1995, after stints as a backup in Dallas and a starter in Detroit, Peete was regarded as a capable if unsensational backup to Randall Cunningham -- a comfort to have on the bench but hardly the future of the franchise.

But four games into the season, with Eagles fans near revolt over a 1-3 start, Rhodes sent Cunningham to the sideline, where he publicly brooded, and turned to Peete.

If Peete was unspectacular, he was efficient. Lacking a strong arm, or an ability to scramble Cunningham-style for first downs, he instead got it done with grit, determination and smarts.

By the time the '95 season ended, Peete had somehow managed to transform that potentially disastrous season into a 10-6 finish, capped by a 58-37 playoff victory over his former teammates, the Lions. If he wasn't the toast of the town, he was at least cause for encouragement.

Peete picked up in 1996 where he left off in '95, leading the Eagles to a 3-1 start, before going down with a season-ending knee injury. With Cunningham long gone, young Ty Detmer took advantage of the opportunity.

But whatever hopes Peete had of reclaiming his old job vanished last season when Hoying, an even younger and more promising quarterback, showed flashes of brillance and potential star-power in a few late-season starts. The Eagles promptly showed Detmer the door, pronounced Hoying the starting quarterback for this season, and offered Peete the backup job.

His first instinct was to test the free agent market, hoping for another starting job somewhere else, but Peete quickly thought better of it.

``Free agency is kind of a rough deal unless you are going to be the most sought-after free agent,'' Peete said this week. ``So, weighing all the options and looking at what they were offering me, it was a pretty good deal. I'm very comfortable here in Philadelphia.''

It meant, of course, acknowledging that it was time to swallow his ambition and graciously assume the role of cheerleader to Hoying, of the wizened veteran willing and able to dispense advice and counsel, confidence and caution. So far, he has done that.

``He doesn't withhold any information,'' Hoying said. ``He tells me whatever he's seeing about my play. For a young guy, it's great to have a veteran to learn from.''

Said Peete: ``He's a young quarterback who's eager to learn, on and off the field. With me around 10 years, I'm able to help him out in a lot of those situations, to tell him things to think about and to work on.''

Such as?

``The pressures of playing quarterback,'' Peete said. ``He's very gifted and he has a lot of tools, but he's a very young quarterback and he's going to make a lot of mistakes. A lot of young quarterbacks get kind of shell-shocked when things don't go their way early on, especially if they're touted as being the `leader' and the `guy.' I try to tell him to just go play the game and don't make it harder than what it really is.''

Having endured the wrath of Philadelphia fans, Peete knows what Hoying likely will face.

``It's pretty much a known fact throughout the league that Philly is the toughest place to play, from a fan standpoint and a media standpoint,'' Peete said. ``You deal with it and understand it.

``If he sputters in the first game, they [fans] are going to be grumbling. It's not an easy thing, but you just have to block that out.''

He is also convinced that the backup job remains his, despite the come-from-behind win over the Pittsburgh Steelers engineered last week by Detmer's younger brother, Koy.

``I'm second on the depth chart,'' Peete said.

How long he will stick around in this role is anybody's guess, including his own.

``It's a good life, a good business,'' he said. ``I'm trying to play as long as I can. If it happens to be this particular role, OK, but I really don't know.''

Peete is already well into preparation for his post-football life. In addition to starting a national marketing and promotions company in Beverly Hills, Calif., his off-season home, he has done some football commentary for Fox and behind- the-scenes work at Warner Brothers.

Still, for now, football is his focus.

``As a backup, especially in the NFL, you have to be ready to play,'' Peete said. ``You're only one snap away.''